List of The last word Archive

Four budget talking points

Blog

22 Apr 2009

Matthew Taylor

A new  dividing line?

Things to bear in mind on Budget Day

Blog

22 Apr 2009

Matthew Taylor

It’s difficult to see how the Government gets a good story out of today’s budget, especially coming on the same day as new, presumably grim, unemployment figures. The question for the press is which of the three lines of attack they choose: ‘borrowing out of control’, ‘public spending to be slashed’ or ‘tax bombshell’.

Spending squeeze - how can we safeguard public health?

Blog

21 Apr 2009

Matthew Taylor

After giving my 16 year old son his birthday presents (the good news, folks, is that eventually, against all the odds, a fine young person starts to dawn from the dark night of teenage volatility and self obsession), I find myself on the panel for an NHS Confederation event titled ‘inequality, nudge and recession: is it time for a new approach to health politics?’.

Photographer Robert Adams on art and society

Blog

21 Apr 2009

The 72-year-old photographer Robert Adams, famous as part of the New Topographics photography movement,  which recorded the impact humans have on the natural environment, has won the 2009 Hasselblad Foundation Award. A lot of Adams' work has focussed on the the spread of the American city into the wilderness. Adams took part in a webchat on behalf of the Hasselblad Foundation. Here's a short extract:

Monkey see, monkey do

Blog

21 Apr 2009

Matthew Taylor has just posted a fascinating piece on the clustering of personality types in places. I'm not sure the 'science of networks' is quite there yet as a tool for policymakers. But I think we can draw a few general conclusions from thinking about well-being and social capital as transmitted along networks, in terms of epidemics and so on.

Happy faces, happy places

Blog

20 Apr 2009

Matthew Taylor

I have Libby Purves in the Times today to thank for putting me on to the research of Dr Jason Rentfrow. Working initially in the US (with Dr Sam Gosling from Texas), and now in the UK, Dr Rentfrow claims to show that there is a geographical basis to personality type.

Artists digging for victory part 2

Blog

19 Apr 2009

This is from an article I have in this morning's Observer magazine:

McBride: how was it for you, darling?

Blog

17 Apr 2009

Matthew Taylor

I have had a few ‘phone calls from Sunday journalists about the McBride affair. ‘Can you tell us more about his operation?’ they say. Which, when you think about it, is a bit like someone saying:

£5 if you read this blog...

Blog

17 Apr 2009

Matthew Taylor

I am speaking next week about communities and it is an area of growing significance to RSA research. Here are my musings. But given this post is five times as long as a blog should be and given that, despite my best endeavours, the prose is both complicated and constipated, I am personally promising £5 to the nominated charity of the first ten people  to leave intelligible (not necessarily positive) comments on my site. (PS For my more superficial readers, I am also going to return very briefly to the McBride affair later on today)